Free Software : Consequences

Free software is generally available at little to no cost and can result in permanently lower costs compared to proprietary software, evidence by free software becoming popular in third world countries. With free software, businesses have the freedom to fit the software to their specific needs by changing the software themselves or by hiring programmers to modify it for them.

Under the free software business model, free software vendors may charge a fee for distrubtion and offer pay support and software customization services. Proprietary software uses a different business model, where a customer of the proprietary software pays a fee for a license to use the software.

This license may grant the customer the ability to configure some or no parts of the software themselves. Often some level of support is included in the purchase of proprietary software, but additional support services (espically for enterprise applications) are usually available for an additional fee. Some proprietary software vendors will also customize software for a fee.

Free software gives users the ability to cooperate with each other in enhancing and refining the programs they use. Free software is a pure public good rather than a private good. Companies that contribute to free software can increase commercial innovation amidst the void of patent cross licensing lawsuits. (See mpeg2 patent holders)

Free software played a part in the development of the Internet, the World Wide Web and the infrastructure of dot-com companies.

There is debate over the security of free software in comparison to proprietary software, with a major issue being security through obscurity. A popular quantitative test in computer security is using relative counting of known unpatched security flaws. Generally, users of this method advise avoiding products which lack fixes for known security flaws, at least until a fix is available.

Some claim that method counts more vulnerabilities for the free software, since their source code is accessible and their community is more forthcoming about what problems exist. The ability to view and modify the software provides a practical defence against Spyware.

There are also questions of responsibility. Free software often has no warranty, and more importantly, generally does not assign legal liability to anyone. This can limit the use of the free software model for some applications, as no person or group is accountable for their work.